"Found Objects"

"Found Objects"
by Jennifer Egan

Rating: 7.7


Short story about a New York woman who compulsively steals from people. In the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel, Sasha noticed a bag on the floor that must have belonged to the woman whose peeing she could faintly hear. Inside the rim of the bag was a wallet.

“Please,” she told Coz. “Don’t ask me how I feel.”
“All right,” he said quietly.
They sat in silence, the longest silence that had ever passed between them. Sasha looked at the windowpane, rinsed with rain, smearing lights in the falling dark. She lay with her body tensed, claiming the couch, her spot in this room, her view of the window and the walls, the faint hum that was always there when she listened, and these minutes of Coz’s time: another, then another, then one more. ♦